Mortar
by Rat-chan
Summary: Holmes returns to consciousness in complete darkness with a bump on his head, a fuzz of drugs in his brain... and possibly no way out. Slight Holmes/Watson slash.


**Disclaimer: **Not my characters. Not my money.

**Note: **Written for an LJ kinkmeme prompt, but not at all kinky.

* * *

"You see, Mr. Holmes," the man sitting across from Holmes in the dark, oddly swaying compartment of the train was saying, "not all of Lord Blackwood's loyal followers were apprehended in Parliament that day." The detective found himself incapable of more than a small, slow nod in response. "I even have evidence here of a new conspiracy amongst them." A peculiar shrieking, distant at first but slowly drawing closer, was making it harder and harder to make out the man's words. "If you'll look he—" The rest of his speech was cut off as the train suddenly braked, throwing Holmes to the floor with a strange pain in his head.

_Screeeeech_. The metallic squeal of the train braking pulled Holmes out of his dreams and into reality. _Surely the train must have stopped by now_, he thought vaguely as he hesitantly blinked his eyes open. His head was throbbing and he did not think he could handle much light.

There was none to handle. _How did this train come to be so dark... so cold... so hard_. And still the sound of the wheels grinding against the rails continued, fraying his nerves, undermining his efforts to regain his senses. Perhaps if he sat upright?

It was with that sensible thought, and the brush of his hand on cool stone as he moved to follow through on it, that brought Holmes fully to reality.

He was not on a train. The sound he was hearing was an intense ringing in his own ears – no doubt stemming from the same cause as his headache. _Why...? I was... Where...? ...not good..._ Incomplete thoughts and unfinished questions ran circles in his brain, chased by acute pain and that infernal ringing. His mind was a ship tossing in a storm and he could not find his sea legs.

_Ridiculous_, he mocked, anger at his own lack of clarity providing a key to finding some. _Such poetic sentiments belong to Watson._

_"What have you gotten yourself into, old cock?" _He heard the voice of his friend in his mind.

"I don't know," he tried to answer aloud, but the dry rasp that came out bore little resemblance to the English language. Add dehydration to his list of ailments. Holmes worked his tongue back and forth a few times, trying unsuccessfully to get enough saliva to swallow. His mouth felt as if it had been rubbed dry with linen – dirty linen no less. There was a distinctly foul taste there, as if he'd vomited recently.

"Ugh," he groaned, moving his hands to check if he'd soiled his clothing. His limbs felt oddly heavy and there seemed to be a delay between when he chose to shift them and when they actually moved. _Drugged_, he decided, _some mix of ether and chloroform, most likely_. The deduction, though hardly reassuring in its results, comforted him. But that didn't explain the tinnitus. _Hmm_... He shifted a leaden hand to his head and probed clumsily around where his head seemed to hurt the most.

"Fff..." he hissed through his teeth as he found, with less delicacy than intended, two sizable goose-eggs. One behind his left ear, the other on the right, near his hairline, and both crusted with dried blood.

_Knocked unconscious _and_ drugged._ That was decidedly unpromising. Time to answer more questions.

"Where am I?" He asked the question aloud, gauging the quality of the silence. "How did I get here?" Seeing if someone or something might respond.

His raspy words were absorbed by the utter stillness and darkness around him. _Very well, then_. He could seek around him for clues to the former question while he searched his memories for the answer to the latter. With another groan at the stabs of pain his movements caused in his skull, Holmes laboriously pushed himself upright. Once on his feet, a wave of vertigo assaulted him, upsetting both balance and stomach. He reached out a sluggish hand and, unexpectedly, caught himself on something. Wood, his dulled senses told him as he fought the spinning of his head and upheaval of his stomach. Some kind of shelves with horizontal slats at front... Dipping curves in those slats... Wine rack. He held more tightly to it and shuffled his feet closer, flaring his nostrils and running his hands over the woodwork as he straightened. Smooth wood... no odor of mold... no bottles on the rack... dust... _A dry, unused cellar then._ And?

_Come now_, Holmes urged his dulled faculties, what else? This could well be a crisis. The deductions ought to have been coming as fast as the observations. He breathed more deeply, but the only other scent he detected was a metallic tang of blood. _My own, most likely_. Moving on.

Half-leaning on, half-exploring the wine rack as he went, he started working his way around the room, casting back in his memory as he did so. _That dream_... Before awakening to his current predicament, he'd seen himself on a train with a man. _Mix of memory and Morpheus_, Holmes decided. There had been an older, distinguished man, claiming to know something of the late, unlamented Blackwood's surviving adherents. Holmes had gone to the man's private, home office after having received a note from him.

_Ah_. Recollection was paused as Holmes' hands found the end of the wine rack and his shoulder found the adjoining wall. Mortared stone, his fingers told him as he moved his exploration to that wall. _An old cellar... an old house..._

The home of the gentleman (Lord Lionel Travers, viscount, his memory finally supplied) had seemed quite old... _Think_! The detective commanded his mind as it tried to once more give in to the tranquility of lingering sedation. He moved more quickly along the wall in the hope that physical exertion might speed his metabolism of the drugs. _Old stone, old house, old man..._ His conversation with Travers had gone rather like that of his dream, except that the real one had ended with—

"Ah!" he gasped aloud this time as his questing fingers found the wood of a doorframe and his brain located the memory of the blow to his head that had so violently ended his conversation. _The villain_, Holmes thought, fingers eagerly grasping the door latch, _it will be a delight to repay him_. Cheerful visions of a shamefaced Travers being clapped in irons by Inspector Lestrade warmed the detective as he pulled open the cellar door.

_What_? No increase of light, no fresh draft of air greeted him upon opening the door. Transitory warmth was leeched away as, instead of freedom, his tentatively extended hand encountered brick. "No," he whispered involuntarily. Bricks and mortar, bricks and mortar, filling every square inch of the doorway without even a hairsbreadth gap to allow any passage of air. "No," he repeated louder as the leaden feeling migrated from his limbs to his stomach and panic tried to join the dance of giddiness at the edges of his consciousness.

_Calm_, he willed. Panic would serve no purpose. Indeed, if he was completely walled in, it would only make him deplete his air supply faster. "Logic," he intoned, calling upon his household god. "If this is a wine cellar," he mused, voicing the words in spite of the loss of hydration and air speech would cause. It drowned out the ringing in his ears and focused him. He continued, "Then there ought to be some ventilation of some kind."

Painstakingly, Holmes renewed his explorations. Inch by inch, wall to wall, floor to ceiling. He found larger racks for casks, all empty, and four stone walls, worn smooth with age, but offering no hint of an opening of any kind. He slipped a finger into his mouth, gagging slightly on the taste of blood, and worked at it until it acquired a slight sheen of moisture before raising it above his head. He shifted it, angled it this way and that, lowered it, but could not detect the slightest current of air.

"Calm," he told himself more firmly than before, impressing the order as best he could on his racing pulse and respiration. He drew a long, deep breath to reinforce it. _There might be a vent that I cannot reach _—_ the circulation of which is blocked slightly_. And if there wasn't, it would be best to keep his breathing slow. He sat down on the chilly stone floor. Quiet reflection, that was what he needed now. The key to his prison, if there was one, likely lay in the hands of his jailer.

Lord Lionel Travers. The man was a near nonentity — just another member of the House of Lords with neither honors nor scandals to distinguish him from his Peers. Holmes had required the use of his Registry to even identify the man upon receipt of his note. "_I have important information regarding the late Lord Blackwood's followers_," Travers had written. The detective had hesitated in complying with the man's request for a meeting — not because he suspected foul play, but rather because he suspected _none_. _Let Lestrade handle it_, he'd thought, and he'd sent the note on to the Inspector. Curiosity and boredom, however, had gotten the better of him and he'd gone ahead and called on Travers in his London house.

_He wasn't lying_, Holmes thought with grim humor. The man clearly had firsthand knowledge of the machinations of Blackwood's erstwhile supporters. _Revenge_? If the savage blows to his head and his current predicament were any indication... But pure retribution...?

There'd been words spoken, between the blow that had knocked Holmes to the floor, nearly incapacitating him, and the one that had finally robbed him of consciousness. _What did he say_? He raised a hand to the wound behind his ear, using the echo of pain to trigger his memory.

_Pain, sudden, unexpected... A blow from behind delivered by an unseen assailant, glancing, inexpertly delivered... Whiff of jewelry polish and clean linen... A servant, then... Soft carpeting under his cheek briefly before a jabbing pressure to his side rolled him onto his back... Hand to his injury... Wetness... Scalp split, bleeding, but not dangerously so... Words... "You will pay for your crimes against our Lord and Master." Hand to the worn Persian rug, fingers scratching an instinctive pattern... "You will die here, Sherlock Holmes, entombed in ignominy – as befits your deeds."_

Entombed. The word sent a chill down Holmes spine and renewed his vertigo. Suffocation, thirst, starvation - one way or another, he was meant to die here.

_No_. He would not have it. Seizing on anger in preference to fear, Holmes jumped to his feet. When his head stopped spinning from the sudden, rash motion, he began pacing the room slowly, roughly measuring its dimensions while he set his mind to escape. _Now_, he thought as he followed the wine rack, counting each careful step, _the drugs they gave me would not last more than a few hours_. He tried to recall more exact numbers, but his mind refused to order the data properly. _In any case_, he mentally snapped the words in an effort to stop the incipient fearful whirling of his thoughts, _not long enough to do all the work necessary to fill that doorway_. "Nine," he said aloud when he reached the back wall. _So_, he continued his self-interrupted deductions, _at least half the work would have been finished before they brought me here_. He repressed an unwonted shudder at the image of Travers gloating over the construction, beady eyes alight with cruel anticipation of Holmes' interment. "Eight," he used the word to once again refocus. So, the room was approximately nine by eight feet with a ceiling about eight feet high. That might give him enough air for... _Perhaps best to keep the perambulation to a minimum_.

With a sigh, he moved to the cask rack and leaned against it, resting his forehead against the backs of his hands and resumed his train of thought. _Now it's unlikely that Travers summoned a professional workman, so the building would have been slow... perhaps finished not long before my return to consciousness!_ This time, excitement sped his pulse. _If the work was so recently done, the mortar may not be completely dry at the top. And if the building was inexpertly done...!_

As quickly as his currently delicate balance would allow, Holmes went to the walled in doorway. Frenetically his fingers moved over the bricks and mortar at the top. _Easy, Holmes_, he calmed himself yet again. There! The lines of cement at the top were still somewhat moist and bits of it came away when he scraped at it with his fingernails. _Promising, but_... He would never succeed in removing even a single brick with just his fingernails. Reflexively his hands went to his tool belt... of which he had naturally been relieved. _Think_! Suspended fear and immediate frustration clawed at the edges of his mind. _There might be something here_. The shelves had been completely void of anything except dust and Holmes had not stumbled over anything on the floor. _The shelves themselves?_ Their thick wood and solid construction would never yield to the detective's bare hands. _Wait_! He again fended off the downward spiraling of his thoughts. There was one last possibility.

"Out of sight, out of mind," he whispered as he got down on hands and knees. Trying not to imagine what else he might find under the racks, he reached a hand beneath one and began searching. Nothing under the first one. There was a renewed sick fluttering in his stomach as he moved to the other. _Please, please, please..._ He couldn't stop the mental pleading, though he had no idea to whom or what he prayed. "Aha!" Heart thudding painfully, he withdrew the item his fingers had located and investigated it.

It was a corkscrew, point somewhat dulled, but sharpened easily enough against the stone floor. _To work._ When he was satisfied with his makeshift pick, Holmes returned to the doorway. The perpendicular handle made his tool rather inconvenient for the job, but he soon found that slow, firm upward strokes were most effective. Blinded by darkness, he had to work by feel and judge his efforts by touch and sound. It was not fast, but the simple, repetitive action did not tax faculties already strained by injury and sedation.

_Just one brick_. If he could work but one free, he would have all the air he needed for the remainder. Carefully, he worked at each edge of his chosen brick, scraping and chipping away the mortar until he only heard the sound of metal on brick, indicating that his implement could no longer reach any cement. As he worked his way around, he tried not to think about how long it was taking. Instead, he tried to imagine his revenge on Lord Travers. _Happy thoughts to speed my labors_.

Scrape. That was the sound of Travers' future being swept away. Scrape. There was the lock of his cell. Scrape, scrape, scrape. And that was the last of Blackwood's conspiracy crumbling away.

The repetition of the image, however, diminished its strength. After working his way all around only to find that his current depth of excavation would not even allow the brick to be wriggled, the gleeful mental image waned. As he re-angled the corkscrew to allow maximum insertion and chipped away even more slowly at the recalcitrant cement, Holmes' triumphant image gradually morphed back to his last sight of the man. "_Entombed in ignominy_," seemed to echo from the stone around him.

_How long will this take_? The question came unwilled. _How long have I got_? His motions became more and more feverish as those two questions bounced back and forth in his mind. Scratch. _Nine feet in length_. Scratch. _Eight in width_. Scratch. _Eight feet high. How long?_ Hands working furiously now, breathing accelerated, he tried to calculate.

_Nine times eight times eight is... But how much space do the racks fill? How much more air does this work require? Respiration increased as much as tenfold, perhaps... How long will it take? How long have I already been here? How much have I used up in exertions? How long do I have left? _Unfinished calculations and redundant questions swam circles in his brain, drawn increasingly into a whirlpool of fear and rage generated by Travers' last promise. _Entombed_.

"No!" Holmes shouted, gouging the corkscrew into the wall with all his strength. "No, no_, no, __**no, NO**__!" _Again and again he struck the metal against the rough surface, gouging at mortar, hammering the bricks, willing the obstinate masonry to give way. "Damn you!" he cursed Travers as a particularly savage blow jolted the corkscrew out of his hand, sending it clattering into the darkness behind him. With an inarticulate snarl of desperate rage, he began alternately clawing at the mortar and pounding at the partially loosened brick with his fists. "Move!" he shouted at it as he struck, "budge!" Again and again, but the brick would do neither.

With a shriller, fearful cry, he turned from the door. _I'll break through it one way or another_! In a frenzy, he gripped the thick frame of the wine rack, pulling at it. The heavy woodwork moved – grudgingly, but move it did. Holmes scrambled to the far end and began alternately pushing and pulling at the upper framework, until, with a splintering crash, the wine rack fell to the floor. Eagerly, he shifted the debris until he came upon a sturdy yet manageable piece. He stumbled back to the doorway and began cudgeling it with his makeshift club.

"Damn. You." He grunted a curse with each blow. "Blast. You. Confound. You. Come. Open!" The wood splintered and broke in his hand. He loosed another inarticulate noise, somewhere between a shriek and a snarl, as he crouched down and scrabbled for another piece of wood. He grasped a larger piece and braced it against his side, clasping tightly. He kicked away the remaining debris, not feeling or caring how he bruised his shins. Then he backed to the opposite wall, braced himself, and finally launched himself and his battering ram at the brick face that held him.

"BREAK!" he screamed as his weapon struck the barrier. The cry cut off before the final consonant as the wood bounced off the wall, propelling Holmes back and down to land painfully on the detritus on the floor, head striking a larger piece.

"Damn you..." he cursed weakly as he lay winded over the broken wine rack. _Damn you..._ He cursed Travers... the brick wall... himself as, stunned, battered, and bleeding anew, he gave himself to a more welcoming darkness.

"Damn you, Holmes," Watson said bitterly. "You plan, you research, you calculate, you deduce, but sometimes you just don't think!"

"I'm sorry, Watson," the detective whispered, gazing up at the man who sat beside him in the dimly lit stone room.

Watson snorted at that and Holmes realized that it was the first time he'd ever voiced the sentiment. "It's rather late for that, don't you think?" The doctor questioned derisively. "Too proud to call Inspector Lestrade to accompany you." The unexpected accusation pained Holmes like a blow to the gut. "Too lofty to tell Mrs. Hudson where you were going." It hurt like only truth could. "And too willful to call me!"

"You wouldn't have come!" The retort came out higher pitched and with less force than he wished, like the cry of a small child.

"No, I wouldn't have," Watson agreed, "I've got better things to do now. But, at least then, someone would know where you are."

"But you're here," Holmes countered lamely.

"I'm leaving," his friend responded harshly. "I've had enough."

"Watson, please—"

"You got yourself into this alone – you can face the consequences alone."

"No, Watson! You can't leave me to die alone..."

"I've troubled myself enough with your life already. Thanklessly. Why should I trouble myself with your death?"

"Because I love you!" Holmes shouted the last words he had left. "I love you," he repeated more softly as the formerly unacknowledged truth of the words sank in.

"It's too late, Holmes," Watson whispered, seeming strangely distant. "Far too late."

_Too late_... Holmes awakened once more to those soft, grim words.

_I never told him_. Knowing the doctor could never return the sentiment in the same way, Holmes had never even voiced it in his mind. _He'll never know now_. He only now realized that, requited or not, Watson deserved – needed to know. _I'll die here and he'll have no idea what's become of me... No idea how I valued him... cared for him_. Eyes too dry to shed tears stung at the thought; that Holmes should perish and Watson would never know just how much the detective appreciated him.

_Watson_, he moved his lips but the name would not come out. He tried again, "Watson." There was no one to hear him. It was probably just a waste of limited breath, but...

"I love you," he whispered, years too late. _I love you_. They were fitting enough last words. He'd hold them, and the feeling they expressed, until he finally passed.

_Won't be long now..._ Three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air - that was the rule, wasn't it? Holmes could not know how long he'd been unconscious – could have no idea how much air was left in the room. _Nine by eight by eight_, he recalled. Absently, he calculated, _one and a half days, perhaps, asleep. Three hours of vigorous activity_. It was certain, at least, that he would suffocate long before thirst became a problem.

_How will that feel_? He considered the prospect. _Will it hurt_? _Will I know who I am in my last moments_? Having determined to die with love on his lips and Watson in his heart, Holmes felt a twisting in his chest at the thought. His fingers began scrabbling in the debris around him, though he had no idea what he was looking for.

Until he found it. The corkscrew. With a point sharp enough, if wielded properly, to give him a swifter, cleaner death.

_A death of my choosing._

The effort was painful, but Holmes levered himself upright nonetheless. _Heart? _No, the twisted metal would neither have an easy passage nor do enough damage to kill him quickly. _Throat?_ He lifted the corkscrew in his hand, but it shook - subtly but too much for a clean cut. _Wrists it is then_.

_Farewell, my dear Watson._

"Holmes!"

He froze in the act of placing the metal against his wrist. He was surely running short of oxygen already, because that sounded like Watson's voice.

_A delusion_. He continued his interrupted motion.

"Holmes!" It was louder this time, with an edge of muffled desperation. It was swiftly followed by several loud thumps.

_What_? His heart skipped a beat then thudded hard and fast. _It can't be_. It must be a last, wishful dream.

"Damn you, give me that blasted hammer!" There were several more muted thumps and finally a resounding crash. "Holmes!" Watson's voice came to him, warmer and even more welcome than the draft of fresh air that followed it.

"Wa-" he tried to answer, but the doctor's name was swallowed by a dry cough.

"Oh, thank God!" The sound had apparently been answer enough. "I'm coming, Holmes." The detective couldn't recall when, or if, he'd heard such emotion in his friend's voice.

"Easy there, Doctor." _Lestrade_? "We'll have him out soon enough."

Holmes looked toward the doorway and watched as a flickering window of light – and the shadow that intermittently filled it – grew larger and larger.

"Doctor Watson, you're hurting yourself, sir," a third voice deferentially chided. _Clarky_?

"It's nothing," was the breathless reply. "He might be hurt in there."

Finally, the window was large enough for the shadow to climb through. "Hand me that lantern, Clarky." The constable apparently complied and golden light pushed away the darkness.

"Watson..." There was his dearest friend, shoulders and chest heaving with labored breath, lean form bathed in candlelight. _Beautiful_... Holmes sighed and closed his eyes.

"Holmes!" There was a metallic clatter and a scuffle of boots on stone and then the detective found himself caught up in a strong embrace.

"'mfine," he rasped, though Watson's hold actually pained him. The feel of the other man's body heat, his breath on Holmes' face was too wonderful to give up for the sake of comfort. He only wished he could get one of his own arms around the doctor.

"Come on now, Clarky," Inspector Lestrade said from the doorway.

"But, Mr. Holmes, sir," the constable protested diffidently.

"Is in good hands, my boy. We've got a bad guy to deal with."

"How...?" Holmes finally managed to ask as the policemen's footsteps receded. He didn't fully register much of the response, however, focused as he was on just the sound of Watson's voice, the brush of his mustache on the detective's forehead, the rapid beat of his heart. There was something about Lestrade and Baker Street and Camden Place and Lord Travers and blood on carpet and...

"'_VR_,' Holmes? You're clubbed half to death and you write Her Majesty's initials in your own blood?" There was a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "Thank God you never change! If I hadn't found you..."

"God save the Queen," Holmes whispered, painfully and painstakingly freeing an arm and raising a bleeding hand to Watson's strangely damp cheek. He opened his lids and turned to meet blue eyes as best he could. Candlelight reflected in the tears there.

There was another, lighter laugh followed by, "Is that all you have to say to me?"

"No." He turned further in Watson's embrace and raised his other hand to cup that beloved face. "No, it's not."


End file.
